Africa

Mali's coup

Clinging to power

EVERY morning a bus caked in dust pulls into Bamako bringing the latest rumours of war. Looking dazed and dehydrated after 24 hours on the road, Mohammad Maiga explains how Tuareg separatists and Islamist militants have turned his native Gao, northern Mali's most populous town, into a ghost town. "Everyone is leaving," says Mr Maiga. "There's no food, no supplies." Blackouts last all day. Banks and offices have been pillaged by rampant rebels.

Mr Maiga says he saw a truck of National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) rebels abduct three young women on the street in front of his house the day before he fled. "They had no choice," he explains. "The rebels had weapons." His claim is impossible to verify but it is one of many alleged instances of murder, robbery and rape laid at the rebels' door. The UN has called for international action to halt the worsening crisis. Aid agencies reckon that over 200,000 people have been displaced though no one knows the exact numbers.

The clearest winners so far from Mali's chaos are a trio of jihadist groups—Ansar Eddine, a Salafist outfit that emerged from the secular MNLA's slipstream; al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb; and another terror group called the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa. The black flag of militant Islam has been spotted over all northern Mali's big towns and residents say public awareness campaigns about the dictates of sharia law are underway. Yet far from berating the Islamists for imposing a strict and alien form of Islam, some inhabitants actually offer guarded praise. Ansar Eddine, in particular, they say, is attempting to rein in the MNLA's rapacious fighters.

Meanwhile, Mali's speaker of parliament, Dioncounda Traoré—who was sworn in as interim president last week to oversee the country's return to democracy—promised "total war" if mediation with the rebel factions fails. But his stridency was meant for those Malians angry and bewildered by the de facto partition of their country following the rebel onslaught. It bears little relation to reality. Malian troops may be massing in Mopti, the staging post for any attack against the rebels, but they are in no shape to launch an offensive.

Mr Traoré's inauguration does not conceal the fact that the junta has yet to cede power. During a televised address soon after he had purportedly bowed to international pressure to restore the constitution, coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo told Malian viewers that his junta "is not going anywhere; when a group of soldiers takes power, nobody can sideline them, and that's no joke." Far from dissolving the junta, he went on, he would meet with Ecowas, the 16-state West African economic block, after Mr Traoré's 40-day tenure expires to decide the next steps. The junta bungled its way to power. Now it seems determined to stay there.

Although I agree with Libya having a direct impact on the sub saharan continent, and specifically northern Mali, this is not an evolution of the Arab spring. In the MENA, uprisings were derived from popular discontent and percieved--often rightly so--social injustice. In this and GB's case, the instability was caused by small cadres of military that were frustrated that they weren't receiving their slice of the pie. Also, I would posit that the Tuareg rebellion would have taken place despite the fall of Libya; it simply was sped up by its fall.

Mali is just another severe lurch downwards in Africa's direction of total anarchy, war lords and tribal chaos falling back into the stone age. Can anyone blame the outside world for dropping this area as a focus for investment?

It seems that the Winds of Change have reverted Africa back to where it left off before the Great Migration out a million years ago. Count the wars, the coups, the waste and the decline. Even Obasanjo had to admit last week in Addis that little was moving forward on the continent.

If this continues and accelerates, consider that the continent's window of opportunity to lift itself out of its mire has closed for a very, very long time. It seems that no one is turning back the Spiral into Iniquity. It has already plunged without any brakes. No one is stopping this free fall.

This may be the first echo revolution of the Arab Spring. Qaadafi relied on foreign fighters who he paid and equipped well. They fought hard and dangerously in Misrata and enabled the regime to last a few more months.
Then Qaadafi was executed. And these mercenaries had to leave unpaid and in fear of their lives.
Some returned to Mali, and now they use their weapons and experience to wage religious war, guerilla war, and terror. Libya exported two things, neither of which were Qaadafi's Green Book and Arab Socialism. And it is all that is needed in a strife ridden, violent region: the Koran and the AK-47.
This is The Domino Theory, now extending to Sub Saharan Africa.
Arab Spring 2.0